


dust to cosmic dust

by sweaterboys



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 03:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14865722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweaterboys/pseuds/sweaterboys
Summary: have you ever noticed that leia's initials spell out L O S S





	dust to cosmic dust

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this on a whim as a gift for someone i love who's graduating high school in like a week; it's p low quality but i did,,, my best,,,,
> 
> (michelle, this is for you.)

i. 

leia organa is six years old and her father is going away-- he’s been assigned to a diplomatic mission to some far-off planet. she’s not happy about it, and she makes this position clear to him. “do you have to leave,” she says, not quite petulant. she knows the answer to her own question. “can’t someone else go?”

senator organa laughs a little, helpless in the face of his daughter’s wrath. “leia,” he says, “i am alderaan’s representative in the galactic senate. it is my duty to—“

“yeah, yeah,” says leia, cross. it is past her bedtime and she finds it really quite unreasonable that she should have to debate this matter at this time of night. “i know. you’ve given that speech, like, a thousand times already.”

“leia,” he says, “my love, you know i don’t have the luxury of staying home. not when there are other people working so hard to make the galaxy a better place.”

she considers this statement for a second. bail is right, of course. she knows that there are people out there who are suffering; she knows that bail organa is one of those rare few who actually care. 

“...fine,” she says grudgingly. “but you have to come home as soon as you can.” there’s something cold in the pit of her stomach and she can’t tell what it is. she doesn’t like it, but she shoves it down, ignores it, for her father’s sake.

bail looks down at her, his eyes impossibly warm. “i promise,” he says with a smile. “i’ll be back before you even notice i’m gone.”

she swallows the lump in her throat and smiles. “okay,” she says. please don’t go. 

her father kisses her forehead and says nothing. he is not there at breakfast the next morning and his absence is a void. leia doesn’t cry. she doesn’t. 

(when he returns a month later, he brings her presents from various planets: clothing, food, books. somehow she can tell he’s back the minute he steps onto alderaan soil. she listens to his stories with wide eyes and marvels at the things he’s brought back and leia is happy. but there are shadows in bail’s eyes and he hugs her a little too tight. the things he has seen will haunt him. he can only pray that they will never haunt his daughter.)

 

ii.

leia organa is nineteen years old and she has been assigned the most important mission of her life. her mind works at a million miles an hour: contingency plan after contingency plan after contingency plan, the strings she’ll pull to get to where she needs to be, the people she can trust to back her up… mon mothma entrusted this to her. she has to do this right, for her own sake and for the galaxy’s.

her reverie is interrupted by the sound of a soft voice calling her name. she turns to greet her father. he looks-- scared. 

“leia,” he says, and oh, his voice is somewhere between pride and anguish. 

“yes?” she says. there is a lump in her throat. leia, for all her competence and bravado, is afraid.

“leia,” says bail again. his voice is close to breaking. “when do you leave?”

“tomorrow morning,” she says. “i’ll have time to eat breakfast with you and ma, then i’m off.” she attempts a brave smile; it doesn’t work.

a fact: leia could die tomorrow.

another one: her parents are afraid. she is their only child.

there are a million things bail wants to say. he says none of them.

instead he looks at her with infinitely gentle eyes. “just come home safe, my love,” he says. “just come back home.”

“yeah,” says leia. “yeah, dad, i will.” 

left unsaid: i am sending my only daughter into the jaws of death oh god what have i done please don’t take her from me leia please don’t go—

left unsaid: i don’t want to go. i have to go, but i don’t want to.

(on the deck of the imperial devastator, leia watches alderaan burn. she does not cry. she doesn’t. a light in the galaxy has gone out and there is something like a black hole in her chest and the stars themselves are screaming in agony and leia’s father is dead-- but she does not cry.)

a fact: she does, technically, keep her promise to her bail. she comes out of the ordeal safe, relatively unscathed. it’s just that she no longer has a home to go back to. 

 

iii. 

leia organa is fifty-three years old, and these children are the brightest thing she has seen in years. 

the Force thrums deeply around them. she lets it wash over her and tries not to think about the last person who excited the Force this much. 

she says goodbye to them and wishes them luck before they go: poe, her right-hand-man, her son-but-not-quite, steady and dependable on the ground and something else entirely in a cockpit; finn, who is so terribly young, who has been trampled underfoot for all his life yet looks up at her with a smile as blinding as a sun. 

...and han. her han, who needs no other descriptor. she looks at his familiar face and he looks back at her. there are years of distance between them. they’re not technically married anymore. but somehow she finds herself wishing this moment could last forever. she doesn’t want him to go. 

“hey,” leia manages finally. 

“hey,” he says. 

“just… come back safe, okay?”

he smiles that crooked smile of his and oh, she is just as in love with him as she was thirty years ago. 

“ah, don’t worry about me, princess,” he drawls, lazy and familiar and so very han. “i always come back safe. you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

(leia tries to believe him.)

 

iv. 

what used to be an entire system is now nothing but cosmic dust and leia knows. the Force wails its agony, a song she knows all too well. 

and suddenly she is nineteen again, terrified and aching and helpless because people she trusts, people she loves are gone and there is nothing she can do and she knows, she knows, she knows in her bones that her son gave the order to fire. 

leia does not cry. she doesn’t. she is a general and she has work to do. she inhales once, exhales once. stands up. she has orders to give and a rebellion to run and leia does not cry. 

(in the back of her mind something delicate shatters. she’d wanted to name him bail.)

 

v. 

han solo never does come home.


End file.
